I am preparing to go into a ten-day silent retreat. There will be no access to email, no phone chats, no opportunities to pop into The Undercurrent to see what the illustrious women of the press are building for the next issue; no impromptu conversations on the ferry, in front of the library, or in the meadow at Crippen Park; no deep conversations over meals with friends. Instead I will be taking a deep look at the conversations that go on between myself and my Self.
As I begin to move into this silent world, it motivates me to think about the importance of conversation. So I look to my friend, Chris Corrigan, who knows more about the art of conversation than anyone else I know. He makes a living hosting high-level conversations with all kinds of people from all over the world. A few months ago, he told me: “conversation softens us.” His words made me wonder about some of the conversations I’ve been involved in, where I came out feeling actually less than soft. Clearly, something was missing. I phoned him to get some clarity.
Chris begins by quoting his friend, Christina Baldwin, another conversation specialist: “The shortest distance between two people is a story,” is how Christina frames it. “In real conversation,” adds Chris, “we are sharing our stories. When you’ve heard someone’s story, you soften toward them, you can’t demonize them.” This helped me recall an experience I had over 30 years ago when I was a volunteer with the Distress Line in Edmonton. Halfway through my first shift, I received a call from a drug dealer who was suicidal; he wanted to jump off the High Level Bridge because of all the suffering he had caused other people by selling them drugs. I have never listened so hard in my life, keenly aware of the fact that the telephone was his tenuous hold on life. Over the next, intense hour, he told me his story, and we both came away changed. This was a human being, deserving of love and attention, no matter what he had done.
“You can discuss facts, you can argue about them,” says Chris, “but a story is someone’s experience of something. You can’t argue with that.” He looks at the etymology of the word discuss: from the Latin discutere, dis, meaning apart, and cutere, meaning shaking. So a discussion is literally “a shaking apart.” The origin of the word conversation, on the other hand, literally means “to keep company with,” “to turn about with.” “Not every talk is a conversation,” Chris admits. Debates, for example in parliamentary procedure, take the emotion out of the exchange; they take the human part out of it. He calls debate “ritualized warfare” – it removes the violence from the confrontation, and it also removes the heart. So a discussion or debate cannot be transformative in the way a real conversation can.
Conversation implies a connection between you and someone else, something more than just reporting on your activities, what you did, what you’re going to do. You are present to each other, listening to each other’s story, and you feel grateful and connected. “Discussion is rational,” he says. “Conversation is an emotional experience.” Your heart is fully engaged. This is where the softening enters; to have a true conversation, one must allow oneself to become vulnerable.
Two years ago, I was part of a Suzuki Elders group engaged in Reconciliation Dialogues with Chief Robert Joseph. It was a privilege to hear the stories of the Coast Salish people who had survived residential school. They, in turn, listened to our stories of loss, and together we discovered our common humanity.
John Niles, in his book, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature, suggests that oral narrative is, and has long been, the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures. Maybe so, but if you’ve ever listened to two ravens prawking and glooing together, it sure sounds like a conversation. There is so much heart in it. They may even be telling stories. I’ve learned a few of their vocalizations so I’m ready if the opportunity occurs.
I will think about these things as I enter the silence. Perhaps I will rediscover that silence and conversation are one thing, and that silence is never empty. It is, rather, a preparation for conversation; and if the silence is deep, and the heart engaged, the words that come forth will not break the silence, they will continue it.
